The American legal system, as well as some other legal systems around the world, rely heavily on written judicial opinions, the written pronouncements of judges, to articulate or interpret the laws governing resolution of disputes. As a consequence, judges and lawyers within our legal system are continually researching an ever expanding body of past opinions, or case law, for the ones most relevant to resolution or prevention of new disputes. Found cases are studied for relevance and are ultimately cited and discussed in documents, called work product, which, for example, advocate court action, counsel clients on likely court actions, or educate clients and lawyers on the state of the law in particular jurisdictions.
Over time, law firms, particularly large one with scores of lawyers and hundreds of clients, amass large collections of work product. In attempting to manage and leverage the value of these collections, many law firms in the last decade or so have sought to use knowledge-managements systems.
Most, if not all, of these systems have been built around document-management systems (DMSs) that assist in storing, indexing, and searching law-firm documents. The indexing and searching capability of these systems allows lawyers to reuse some of their work product, and thus have in some instances enhanced the efficiency of lawyers in developing new work product.
However, the present inventors have recognized that centering a law firm's knowledge management on document-management systems presents at least two problems. First, the document collections in these systems are generally undisciplined in the sense that they include multiple versions of the same document, non-legal documents, and so forth. Thus, searches in the DMS collections often turn up marginally relevant documents or draft documents that frustrate efforts to quickly identify the high-quality finished documents most likely to have reusable content. Second, even when apparently reusable documents are found, it is necessary for lawyers or other highly trained personnel to assess not only whether their legal arguments are of high quality, but also whether their supporting case law has been overruled, weakened, or otherwise affected by newer case law or other legal developments. (Even with online legal research services, such as the Westlaw online service, that allow one to check the validity of case law on a case-by-case basis,) this assessment is generally time consuming and thus offsets the efficiency gains of reusing work product.
Accordingly, the present inventors have identified a need for better systems, tools, and methods of managing and leveraging the accumulated knowledge within law-firm document collections.